Reel Affirmations 2008

WE ALL KNOW that sometimes love hurts. What we don’t know is in exactly how many ways. This collection of shorts explains a few of them, though with a mixed rate of success.

Float () takes place in the Bahamas, where a young white guy with obsessive-compulsive disorder, Jonny, is struggling to find himself as both an artist and a gay man. During a retreat at a beachfront home, he hooks up with the flirtatious and vivacious Romeo, who tries to split his affections between Jonny and a Juliet. A few nice moments in both setting and performance make Float a nice diversion, although a bit cliched.

Next up on the heartbreak world tour is Nazi Germany for My Little Boy (), where a gay photographer decides to stay in Berlin despite the government’s increasing persecution of the burgeoning gay movement. Why stay? He has a boyfriend who, it so happens, is a brown-shirted member of the S.A. History students will recall the stories of homosexual S.A. commander Ernst Roehm and his fate, but you don’t need to be a history major to see what’s coming.

Now to Canada, where the young and beautiful French-Canadian teen Julien is on summer vacation with his family in Mirrors (). Everyone from his parents to his friends to his gay neighbor is having lots of sex, except for Julien, who as a result is pensive and withdrawn. But in an exceedingly photogenic way that would totally play on Gossip Girl or something. Overall, Mirrors is odd, yet sweet.

Down south in New York City for Cabalerno (), another pensive and pretty young teen is surreptitiously videotaping the object of his desire, a slightly older and smolderingly hot skateboarder. No dialogue to be found here, but the story is crystal clear.

Finally, somewhere in an American college dorm room, an Asian student and a professor are getting ready to get it on in Dissolution of Bodies (), if they can ever get finished with their interminable chatfest about postmodernism. It’s all very meta.

Other stops on the Love Bites world tour include 41 Seconds, The Companionist, Love Hurts, and Benny’s Gym.